R THE A _t... / '" :: ::: == ';'", . .. ... ,. ,- _---- _ :: .,,:: nu /11"\\ . o ....,,, 0 0 . 0 '" . #. ..,. THE TALK OF THE TOWN A behind-the-scenes look at what's coming up-onscreen, onstage, on court, and off the racks. PICA550 PIC HA5 HEIR5 5EEING RED! P ABLO PICASSO'S unruly spirit is mighty yet. Certainly the Master's presence is being felt around "Surviving Picasso," the movie that James Ivory begins shooting in ParIs next month. The subject of the film is Picasso's decade-long relation- ship with Françoise Gilot, which began in 1943, when she was twenty-one and he was almost three times that. Dur- ing those years, Picasso moved to the South of France and made paintings that celebrated his life there with Gilot, sometimes including Claude and Paloma, their son and daughter. Just what examples of this work will you see in "Surviving Picasso"? If Claude Picasso and the Picasso estate have theIr way, none. The problem began when Claude, who lIves in Paris and administers the estate, read the script, which is by the Merchant Ivory veteran Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It is to be expected that those who figure in any dramatic biogra- phy-book or movie-may not find the way they are treated a hundred per cent to their liking. Still, the film- makers seem to have felt that this case would be different, because Gilot is de- :::ï picted as an anomaly in the Maestro's life-the Woman Who Got Away- which is the way she depicts herself in her memOIr, "Life with Picasso." The family, however, is not mollified one bit. "It's mostly dialogue lifted from my mother's book and reorganized in the z most absolutely absurd way. And then certain elements have been added to (/) ::::> k . h " ma e lt quote unquote co erent, Claude said in New York recently. "Things have become a travesty of any- thing that ever happened." He added that his mother feels the same way- " E " ven more so. Now, there is nothing to prevent anybody from writing a book OJ; shoot- ing a movie about a public figure, even against that person's most furious wishes, and Ivory has said that the script was based on "many, many books." But reproducing that public person's art is quite another thing. Some weeks ago, lawyers for the Pi- casso estate advised Warner Bros., un- der whose aegis the movie is being made, that all permissions to show the work were being withheld. The Amer- ican law concerning copyrights to work by artists who died within the last half century is complex. French law, though, tends to uphold the rights of heirs to a copyright, and therefore the reproduction rights, regardless of who may own the actual work. T HE sangfroid of the makers of "Surviving Picasso" seems, under the circumstances, remarkable. "The movie is about Picasso's character . . . power," said David Wolper, who, with Ismail Merchant, is producing the movie for Warner. "And how Picasso's art changes as his women change." Just how will the movie show his changing art? "It's a tricky law," Wol- per said. "As they have done in many films, you can do what you call a copy. It's a look-alike. It' not a Picasso, but it's a look-alike. "Obviously, pictures will be painted in the film," he added, saying, "If you show a preliminary phase, you're not showing a painting. You know what I mean? If you have a picture with four lines on the canvas, it's not the painting." Will there be any actual completed works from Picasso's hand in the movie? ''Well, some works we'll be able to show and some we won't," Wolper said, with the manner of one treading on eggs. "There are certain works that are owned by certaIn members of the es- tate. And there are certain paintings that are not owned by certain members of the estate." Claude Picasso is baffled by W 01- per's claim that the movie might be able to show any of his father's art works at all. "} don't see how. The rights cover the complete æuvre," he saId. "Thev can't show the art. So .J now they are going to make some Picassoid-whatever things. They are like forgeries, and they are going to give a very bad impression of the art-